LAST EDIT: 2008/12/25
Hi all, I've created unofficial minimal CDs based upon 2008.0 profile.
The main reason for doing this was to be able to migrate my root partition to reiser4 filesystem while having the ease of a bootable CD from where to resolve problems (just in case! ). First snapshots were just 2007.0 CDs with reiser4 kernel + reiser4progs. But since many users have the need to install an updated system from scratch and can't really wait for 2008.0 to come out, I've decided to build "stable" CDs based on 2008.0.
I won't make full liveCDs (too much time and hassle) but if anybody's interested I'll keep supporting these two, at least to provide reiser4-compatible minimal CDs.
-> I won't answer of any data loss caused by these minimalCDs. Reiser4 is still *unstable* and *testing*, you've been warned. Best would be to have a stage4 to recover from.
-> Everything's hosted on a 100Mbit server from OVH (running gentoo, of course!! ) and the directory hierarchy is the same as the one from gentoo mirrors. Both HTTP and FTP download are available.
Link: http://www.faskatech.net/Please refer to the link above for latest information about the release and my overlay.
Hope to be useful to somebody out there I'll wait for feedbacks, comments and critics

All your other suggestions were already included by default
acx drivers are pre-mac80211, I don't know if newer ones (based on mac80211) are already available/stable enough.
For truecrypt... I'm still trying to figure out from the license if I can integrate it and if so, how (I should expose something like "Portions of this product include TrueCrypt", but I'm not sure). Will check
AMD64 will be delayed a while, until I know for sure if I can or not integrate truecrypt (I hate to do things over and over).
I'm currently recompiling stage3 for x86 and as soon as I'm sure about truecrypt I'll build the CDs. I expect to have them ready and uploaded to server by tomorrow morning (at least for x86, amd64 may be available on sunday)._________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

argh, well, couldn't you've started a few days earlier Now I'm sitting here with a %$&§&§ Ubuntu-x64-LiveCD, cause I need a .24kernel with XTS-Support :/

Thanks anyway, would be cool if you'd keep them up2date, lilke an update once a month or on any new kernel-release, it's annoying to always need to burn something huge like knoppix/ubuntu/... just to get your new hardware installed.

@Eckos: I don't plan at all to offer X support, this was born and is intended to be just a minimal CD, not a full liveCD. If you want to browse and don't mind the graphical interface, there's always links
@ph030: sorry... had no time to plan something like this before this week I think I'll update them whenever a stage3/core system package (gcc, binutils, portage on top) will suffer critical update bugs (like expat did) or gets upgraded to a new major version (ie. gcc 4.2.3 -> 4.3.0). About kernel updates, I'm unsure. I'm thinking to wait some time to stabilize major versions to minor release fixes, and then update.

I decided not to include truecrypt support. This is because I have to make a phrase like "This product includes truecrypt support" appear to the user at some point, and I honestly don't know how to do this. Sorry truecrypt users
I'm currently trying to fix the acx ebuild (this time mac80211) to compile against 2.6.24-r3 (my old overlay ebuild doesn't work )_________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

I decided not to include truecrypt support. This is because I have to make a phrase like "This product includes truecrypt support" appear to the user at some point, and I honestly don't know how to do this. Sorry truecrypt users

that's an easy one

write something into your /etc/motd (on your system), and see for yourself

Latest news... months of overlay build made me forget to check the official portage tree. acx is working
@kernelOfTruth: Thanks a lot! I really had no will to search for something more... I'm quite busy these days in making these CDs work and I've also got lots of things to study... so a search this time to learn something from scratch again was quite... hem... stressing? Will provide truecrypt ASAP according to truecrypt license Somebody will have to test it though... _________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

If you're concerned about PATA/SATA drivers, they're already builtin. Also SCSI/RAID drivers are builtin now
Will work on integrating ndiswrapper too... I'm currently working only on livecd-stage2 luckily (hence a lot less work to do than before )_________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

Updates: I'm currently integrating ndiswrapper. But about truecrypt... I'll describe shortly: truecrypt is fetch restricted and official download page shows only version 5.1a (latest stable). Sadly, no updated ebuild has been provided yet (5.1a was released 4 days ago). I tried to put up a modded ebuild but it just fails on compile, and I really don't know how to fix this. I mean *lots* of errors and I'm not the typical guy who surrenders too fast... disabled patches, reworked make commands, but nothing worked. I've decided to wait for truecrypt 5.1a ebuild to come out. I can't even add 4.3, 5.0 or 5.1 because sources are no longer available for those versions. When it's ready and unstable (at least it'll compile) I'll add it to the CD. Of course if somebody could provide "Truecrypt 5.1 Source.tar.gz" file, I'd be willing to integrate it directly...
Please, if you've got anything you wish to have integrated, ask before tomorrow 18.00-19.00 (GMT+1) (no X-dependant ebuilds will be taken into account). Past that I'll stop rebuilding over and over, to make available a "stabilized" CD and finally build the AMD64 target. When enough requests will show up, I'll rebuild again (will keep you updated of course )
I'm currently rebuilding livecd-stage2 for x86 and I'll upload it by tomorrow morning. Unless somebody can provide that file, I'll leave truecrypt out until official ebuild shows up. Thanks to all for your support, suggestions and critics. I'm trying whatever I can to keep up
[edit] seems like someone read this post last night... now official 5.1a truecrypt ebuild is available and I'll integrate it. [/edit]_________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

Integration requests are officially closed ^^
I've spent the whole day integrating truecrypt because of library and dependencies issues. This led me to manually strip gcc files instead of simply unmerging it in the last stage. I think I've forgot something to remove... The downside of all of this is that now the "minimal" CD weighs about 92Mbytes...
I'm doing a fresh and sane build of livecd-stage2 (removed old temporary files/caches) and I shall be able to upload it before 21.00 (will be unable to check the process though). I'll check it when I'm back (about 00.00). Until then I suggest you not to download the minimal CD. Will notify when it's downloadable of course
Tomorrow I'll build amd64 target _________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

-> truecrypt should work (no more deps/library issues, program executes fine, needs feedback on some truecrypt'ed device)
-> ndiswrapper should work (haven't tested driver install but provided that liveCD's /etc is writable, it will work)
-> SATA/PATA drivers (based on newer SATA/PATA stack) have been ported back to modules to offer some more control (older ones in ATA/ATAPI support are still builtin)
-> SCSI emulation, SCSI support and all RAID types are builtin (of course with raid targets support)
-> acx is integrated with upgraded firmware
-> reiser4 programs/dependencies/kernel stuff does behave well (tested)
-> dev-lang/perl is now left installed, is required as a dependency of ndiswrapper (nice addon for scripters though )
-> Following ebuilds have been integrated since first release:
app-misc/wipe
sys-fs/parted
sys-fs/hfsutils
sys-fs/dmraid
sys-process/htop
net-misc/rsync
sys-fs/ntfs3g (latest unstable)

I will have to rebuild stage3 for amd64 because some ebuilds have been updated since initial workings. Provided I have most of the packages cached, this should take just a little. I will still have to rewrite livecd-stage2 file for amd64 because of gcc required dependencies for truecrypt, but that shouldn't take that much either.
I hope to be able to release amd64 target before tomorrow evening
Have fun _________________Neo2
Unofficial minimal liveCD for x86/amd64 w/reiser4+truecrypt

Done/v2 amd64 unofficial minimal CD is available too!
All the specifics are the same as the x86 one, except the following: net-dialup/slmodem is not included in this release, because even the latest unstable version doesn't compile on AMD64. Or maybe it's just that I had to unmask only "2.9.11_pre20080126" instead of the "2.9.11_pre20080126-r1" version. But I don't think that's the case since also all previous versions are marked unstable. If somebody can confirm... anyway, that's the daemon to handle Smartlink modems... I just hope that nobody will try to install Gentoo with a 56k phone line... If somebody needs it, I'll try to work on it, but to include it in the next release cycle. I've spent all (I mean 9+ hours) of the last 6 days working on these CDs and testing... and I'm quite tired now
amd64 release weighs about 100 megabytes, sorry but this is the cost of "full" software package.
Last note: as you can see, I've provided also stage1,2,3 for both architectures, so that if anybody needs a fresh and updated install, it's available. Since no packages can be added during those stages, they're comparable to the ones provided by official stages, except of course the fact that they're completely updated

Thanks to all for your support!
I'd like to receive some feedback from someone who has used it but seems like everybody's quite happy
/me has migrated root of my main desktop to reiser4, never been so fast
Seems like (at least to me judging from the daily updates diffs) that the system packages from the official tree are being stabilized in the perspective of the official 2008.0 release. It's hard to tell when another unofficial release will be done. But don't worry, I won't forget to upgrade every now and then

Since I hosed my Vista install yesterday and my arch install today I figured gentoo was worth the trouble now, as I know exactly how to fix a thoroughly borked gentoo

Since I didn't want to go hunting for a cd, I grabbed the first thing that I could find - a random 512MB usb drive, and consulted the almighty google for a few minutes. Now I got your livecd on it, and it actually works. I'd put up a image ready to be cloned to a thumbdrive, but I have to zero out the thumbdrive and redo it.